The H.X. letter also was published in The Theosophist and was followed by "A PROTEST" signed by eleven chelas, among whom were several familiar names: T. Subba Row, Dharbagiri Nath, Guala K. Deb, Damodar, Noblin Bannerjee, and others. H.P.B. did not want to publish the H.X. letter but was told by the Mahatmas to do so. Apparently the original command came from the Mahachohan himself. H.P.B. was deeply upset about it.
In LBS, p. 29, under date of August 26, we find her anguished letter to Sinnett about the whole situation. She sent Hume's letter to him to read. She has had enough of him, she says, even if the Brotherhood has not. She would have thrown his letter in the fire, but "K.H. sent word with Morya that he wanted it absolutely published."
And, finally, in LBS, p. 304, there is a letter from Hume to the Mahatma K.H. which the latter sent on to Sinnett with some comments of his own inserted between lines. His comments are given in bold type. In this letter, Hume tells the Mahatma that he cannot rely solely upon him, as he has too little time and the manner in which he teaches is "so slow and unsatisfactory that it would not be right for me to look nowhere else." He also made the statement that he was a better Adwaitee than either M. or K.H.
Hume had, as a matter of fact, taken up with another "teacher" — known as the Swami from Almora — a man who seems to have made pretensions to being greater than he was. He had written some articles for The Theosophist to which Subba Row had taken some exception. The Swami was, it seems, an enemy of the Mahatmas and, according to H.P.B. he once threatened to "expose them as Dugpas." He died, incidentally, not long after Hume took up with him.
These long explanatory notes seemed necessary to make Letter No. 81 intelligible. Practically the whole letter is concerned with these matters. From the Mahatma' s opening statement it is apparent that Sinnett had asked him what was going on "below the surface." Hume' s impending resignation as President of the Simla Eclectic T.S. may have been the catalyst.
The Mahatma's explanation of his use of the phrase "exercise my ingenuity" refers to a comment he made about a passage in Isis in his answers to the questions in Letter No. 70-A and 70-B. In that letter he said: ". . . you have fallen into the same mistake . . . as C.C.M.; though I must confess the passage in Isis was very clumsily expressed, as I had already remarked to you . . . I had to 'exercise my ingenuity' over it — as the Yankees express it, but, succeeded in mending the hole, I believe — as I will have to many times more, I am afraid, before we have done with Isis. It really ought to be rewritten for the sake of the family honor."
This implies that the Mahatma K.H. must have written either a part or all of H.P.B.'s editor's note in response to Massey's criticism, as this was what he had to exercise his ingenuity over. As a matter of fact, on p. 26 of LBS, H.P.B. says: "K.H. was so kind as to dictate to me last night nearly all of my answer to Massey."
It seems that, in writing to the Mahatma, Sinnett called this ("I had to exercise. . .") "an unhappy phrase" and asked for an explanation. The Mahatma patiently grants that request.
Received Simla, Autumn, 1882.
There is nothing "below the surface," my faithful friend — absolutely nothing. Hume is simply furiously jealous of anyone who received, or is likely to receive any information, favours (?) attention, or anything of the sort, emanating from us. The word "jealous" is ridiculous, but correct unless we call it envious, which is still worse. He believes himself wronged, because he fails to become our sole centre of attraction; he attitudinises before himself and feels maddened to fury in finding no one who would admire him; writes out a Hebrew passage which means in Eliphas Levi's book as I have rendered it, and failing to catch me in a new contradiction, for the purpose of which he went to the trouble of quoting it, he impresses himself with the illusion that he is "far more of an Adwaitee" than either M. or myself ever were (an easy thing to prove since we never were Adwaitees), and writes an abusive letter directed against our system and ourselves to the O.L. by way of soothing his feelings.
Are you really so generous as not to have suspected long ago the whole truth? Did I not warn you; and is it possible that you should not have perceived that he will never allow even an adept to know more or better than himself!; that his was a false humility; that he is an actor, who enacts a part for his own benefit, regardless of the pleasure or displeasure of his audience, though when the latter is manifested to the slightest degree, he turns round, concealing admirably his rage and hisses and spits internally. Every time I contradict and prove him wrong, — whether in a question of Tibetan terms, or in any other trifle, the record he keeps against me swells, and he comes out with some new accusation. It is idle, my dear brother, to be always repeating that there are [not], nor can there be any contradictions in what was given to you. There may be inaccuracy of expression, or incompleteness of detail; but to accuse us of blundering is really too funny. I have asked you several times to make notes and to send them to me, but neither Mr. Hume nor you have thought of doing it; and indeed, I have very little time to explore back letters, compare notes, look into your heads, etc.
I confess my ignorance, in one thing at any rate. I am perfectly at a loss to understand why the expression used by me with regard to H.P.B.'s answer to C.C.M. should have so shocked you; and why you should object to my "exercising my ingenuity"? If, perchance, you give it another meaning than I do, then we are again both at sea — faute de s'entendre. Put yourself for a moment in my place, and see whether you would not have to exercise all the ingenuity you had at your command, in a case like that between C.C.M. and H.P.B. In reality, there is no contradiction between that passage in Isis and our later teaching; to anyone who never heard of the seven principles — constantly referred to in Isis as a trinity, without any more explanation — there certainly appeared to be as good a contradiction as could be. "You will write so and so, give so far, and no more" — she was constantly told by us, when writing her book. It was at the very beginning of a new cycle, in days when neither Christians nor Spiritualists ever thought of, let alone mentioned, more than two principles in man — body and Soul, which they called Spirit. If you had time to refer to the spiritualistic literature of that day, you would find that with the phenomenalists as with the Christians, Soul and Spirit were synonymous. It was H.P.B., who, acting under the orders of Atrya (one whom you do not know) was the first to explain in the Spiritualist the difference there was between psyche and nous, nefesh and ruach — Soul and Spirit. She had to bring the whole arsenal of proofs with her, quotations from Paul and Plato, from Plutarch and James, etc., before the Spiritualists admitted that the theosophists were right. It was then that she was ordered to write Isis — just a year after the Society had been founded. And, as there happened such a war over it, endless polemics and objections to the effect that there could not be in man two souls — we thought it was premature to give the public more than they could possibly assimilate, and before they had digested the "two souls"; — and thus, the further sub-division of the trinity into 7 principles was left unmentioned in Isis. And is it because she obeyed our orders, and wrote, purposely veiling some of her facts — that now, when we think the time has arrived to give most of, if not the whole truth — that she has to be left in the lurch? Would I, or any of us, ever leave her as a target for the Spiritualists to shoot at, and laugh at the contradictions when these were entirely apparent, and proceeded but from their own ignorance of the whole truth; a truth they would not listen to, nor will they accept it even now, except under protest and with the greatest reservations? Certainly not. And when I use the word "ingenuity" — that may be an American slang expression for all I know, and that I suspect has with the English another meaning — I meant neither "cunning" nor anything like a "dodge," but simply to show the difficulty I had to labour under, to explain the right meaning with an endless and clumsy paragraph before me, that insisted upon non-reincarnation without inserting one word in it to show that the latter had reference but to the animal soul, not Spirit, to the astral, not the Spiritual monad.